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| Keith Chester |
This
week I interviewed Keith Chester who literally wrote the book on the Foo
Fighters called Strange Company.
These were things, balls of light, maybe craft that harassed pilots as it
turned out, on both sides of the Second World War. The Allied high command were
so concerned with these reports that they created four separate investigations
in their attempts to find out what was being seen and to learn if this was some
sort of Axis weapons system that would change the course of the air war.
There
was one thing that became clear and underscored something that I have been
saying for years (which I learned from Keith’s book) is that the modern era of
UFO sightings didn’t begin with Kenneth Arnold in June 1947, but began with the
Foo Fighters during the war. Two names surface in Strange Company and those are Dr. H. P. Robertson of Robertson
Panel fame and Colonel Howard McCoy who was also involved in the Ghost Rockets
and later with the UFO investigations here. This establishes a thread that runs
through UFO investigations long before Arnold and suggests that the interest in
Foo Fighters transcended the end of the war. You can listen to the interview
here:
Strange Company from Anomalist Books is still
in print. You can find both the paper copy and ebook at Amazon here:
and
Next
Week’s Guest: Brad Steiger
Topic:
Ghosts, Vampires, Werewolves and things that go bump in the night. (Hey, it’s
just before Halloween, what’d you expect?)
And
for those of you keeping score at home, Roswell in the 21st Century
is now available as an ebook. Click on the book cover to your left and it will
take you directly to the site.
5 comments:
Great show. My favorite so far. Thanks for doing it, Kevin.
I ordered his book.
What I found most interesting is the connection with the WDGS. I would like to hear from the BB guy, that you will be interviewing in the future, regarding what his take is/what he knows about the USA,GSC and their part in the UFO investigations?
It even seems to have possible connections with items such as folks mentioning Captain Holder and his: "not cooperating" with the BB staff.
Hi Kevin.
Got my copy today.
I promise I will order your book as soon as I can afford it :) I really shouldn't have bought a book, but Mr. Chester's research seems to coincide with mine, so much so, that I thought it was important enough. Thanks again for turning us on to him.
/Bob
Just listened to program. Some of my take-aways:
1. Dr. H. P. Robertson of 1953 Robertson UFO Panel infamy, was very high up in scientific intelligence, including air intelligence, during WWII, being one of AAF C/S Gen. Spaatz's top scientific advisors. He would have undoubtedly been involved in the gathering of scientific intelligence on the foo fighters.
2. All such intelligence was funneled through Wright Field, center for AF UFO investigations Projects Signs through Blue Book, but also an unofficial Project Saucer that began in Dec. 1946 (according to Wendy Connor's research). Heading these investigations at Wright Field was Col. Howard McCoy, who during WWII was also the head of Air Technical Intelligence.
3. The Robertson Panel (maybe Robertson himself) equated the foo fighters to the later titled flying saucers as being the same phenomenon.
4. Air Technical Intelligence had crash recovery teams during WWII to swoop in and recovery crashed Japanese and German aircraft. Such specialized crash recovery teams would likely continue post-war.
5. Many of the same names associated with post-war official UFO investigations were also associated with the foo fighters and 1946 ghost rockets: Robertson, McCoy, Gen. Donald Putt, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg. One very important one unfamiliar to me was Dr. David T. Griggs, radar expert, who was at the top of the scientific intelligence command during WWII. Keith Chester says his reports have never been found.
6. Another name that jumped out at me was Dr. Edward Bowles, who I know was another radar expert from MIT and who had worked closely with Dr. Vannevar Bush in setting up the MIT radar lab pre-War. According to Chester, Griggs was scientific director to Bowles and Bowles reported directly to the undersecretary of War. I also know that Bowles post-war was a scientific advisor to the Sec. of War. Along with Gen. Curtis LeMay, Bowles was briefing Gen. Vandenberg the morning of July 8, 1947, just before a suddenly called meeting at the Pentagon of Dr. Vannevar Bush's Joint Research and Development Board. This meeting was held simultaneously with the general staff meeting at Roswell that morning. This is the same group named in the Canadian Wilbert Smith papers 3 years later as containing a supersecret group headed by Bush looking into the "modus operandi" of the saucers.
7. Bowles, LeMay, and Hap Arnold were also all involved post-War in setting up Project RAND, which reported directly to LeMay, the first Army AF vice chief for R & D. (Their first white paper in 1946 was about orbiting a satellite.) The day before that July 8 JRDB meeting, LeMay had also been briefing Vandenberg on the flying saucer situation, according to Vandenberg's log.
These guys were all up to their eyeballs going back to WWII in investigating UFOs.
Kevin,
Here is a Foo Fighter story I found on UFO Chronicles that came from a newspaper in Paris in 1944. I thought this was interesting because it was a non-military story.
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2008/09/foo-fighters-new-nazi-weapon-is-noticed.html
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